3. Scarlet paint on the womb 🌻

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 

Romans 8:35

02/08/17 – 04/08/17

We’ve been in this apartment for three years, wooden floors, potted plants, and crème and white colored furniture. I didn’t want to take away from the natural light streaming through the French windows, but I’ve left most of the shutters closed today. There are only clouds outside anyway. For the first time in those three years, the city noises feel too loud. Everything, everyone seems too rushed and I never understood the urgency of big city folk, but I’ve relearned of loss before there was ever a time to fathom anything beyond the abstract. Today I was brutally reminded how we shouldn’t think we have time to keep our loving for tomorrow because sometimes, sometimes there is no today.

The stillness inside is unbearable, it’s too stuffy with the ghosts roaming about, so I sit by the kitchen window watching the pour through the fog of my lemon balm tea. I can tell by the smell of wet concrete and smog that people have places to be because today is just another day and tomorrow flowers will open their petals again to welcome sunlight and honey bees and on normal days my darling and I would have joined the lazy Sunday crowd at the farmer’s market after church, but it seems ridiculous that the world goes on when even the sky has recognized our grief.

I place a hand on my abdomen out of habit, or perhaps out of disbelief and my darling he’s leaning against the white kitchen island, staring absently at the vase of sunflowers – their color is too bright, as are the oranges. We haven’t said a word to each other for a while now. I fear the confirmation that breaking this silence will bring with it. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t let him hold me after I loaded the bloodied bed sheets into the washing machine this morning. I do not remember feeling afraid or shocked, only despaired. He asked me if I was dying, and for a short, shameful second, I wished that I was.

The mama bird that perched her nest outside of the kitchen window some weeks back distracts me as she protects her babies from the rain and it is almost endearing, but my chest tightens and I begin to feel robbed. I think of the shea butter I was going to use on my swelling belly and I begin to weep. I sense my darling wanting to come hold me and I think it’s more for him but I stand and walk to the fridge, away from him because we haven’t yet eaten and it is excuse enough to absolve myself of the responsibility of his grief. I don’t know how I could ever make up for my body’s betrayal and my legs start to feel as if they might give in under this new weight so I lean my head against the cold metal and let tears fall through closed eyes.

I let him pull me to him because I don’t think I can stand anymore and I wonder vaguely if there is a place in heaven for those who have never been introduced to God. I wonder who will take care of our baby where he might have ended up. It was too early to know the gender but it felt like a baby boy Iman in my womb, with the same eyes as his daddy, but with my rounded cheeks, and grief is knowing that we will never meet him. Anger is knowing that there was never time.

Uncertainty is fearing death for the first time since putting my faith in the Lord because I no longer know where my faith stands.

My darling whispers that we’ll get through this because we have God on our side. He says it like it is inevitable. Like it is the only thing that he knows for sure and a bitter taste rises in my mouth that I want to spit out. I want to ask him on whose side God was on this morning when Iman slipped through our fingers. I want to ask him how faith is still enough for him to stand on.

I want to curse the sunflowers for chasing sunlight blindly when it cannot stop winter from coming, and the bird for flaunting its motherhood in my face, and the world for is contentment.

And I begin to laugh because at this time it is silly that I should wonder how I will ever get the blood stains off our bed sheets. 🌻